Manufacturing Recruitment Advice - Manufacturing Market Mapping

13 July 2018

Speaker 1: You're listening to Manufacturing Ignition Recruitment Advice. Bringing you right up to date on the latest recruitment information, trends, and discussions to help you recruit the best people for your business. Sponsored by Bonfire Recruitment, helping manufacturing leaders across the UK to attract the best talent for their manufacturing company. Ignite your business or career today by visiting www.bonfirerecruitment.com. Here's your hosts, Terry Mallin and Scott Buchanan.

Terry Mallin: So Scott, obviously moving on to the recruitment minute. So I think the big question that I have for anyone who hires people within teams, or within the business, or internal recruitment, or HR, anyone at all; do you know the size of the manufacturing market within the UK? And that might be manufacturing as a whole, it might be within your specific sector, do you know how many people are employed within the bakery industry in the northwest of England? Do you know how much is employed in the southeast of England? Etc. And there's a good reason why it's worthwhile to know these numbers, and Scott, can you give us a wee bit of insight in how you've found mapping out the market and getting a real insight into the opportunity there?

Scott Buchanan: Yeah. Well, I remember you and I talking about this, what, a year ago? And one of the things I am impressed with is actually what I've done, I've done 11 years or so doing this type of role in my career so far. Loving every minute of it, and one of the things you try and give a client is to make sure that you're giving them the best options of the candidate base that you've got access to, and what you tend believe is the more of a network you've got, and the more tools you've got to attract a candidate, the better chance you've got of giving ... you're being true to your word. And one of the conversations that you and I had about a year ago was actually your insight in terms of seriously mapping out the marketplace, and it can be any marketplace, about actually being able to say specifically there's 20,421 candidates doing whatever it is, or people doing whatever it is, whether they're actually looking or not, is there. It didn't even occur to me.

Scott Buchanan: Do you know that way you can get in as detailed as that? And certainly, as you know, that's what we've been striving to do.

Terry Mallin: 100%, it seems to be working. I think the thing is, Scott, probably over 95% of recruitment agencies, internal recruitment, etc. won't have mapped out their industry, because we're all busy in the day to day in what we're doing, and at the end of the day having the right tools to be able to do that is a different story, and putting in the investment to do that, and say within internal recruitment, has the opportunity to invest in that and actually make it happen.

Terry Mallin: I think, personally, the benefit of knowing your market is the fact that if you were sitting at the senior leadership team meeting and you're the internal recruiter, or whoever, and the business leader is asking for you to recruit a key member of staff, they're looking for a chief engineer within a large food business down in the southwest of England, and say it's within the dairy industry, just for talking sake, okay? How powerful would it be if you can say within 30 seconds that you can say within a 30 mile radius of our site there are 16 potential chief engineers, of which 10 are specifically within the dairy industry, and you have their names, and you're able to contact them on that specific opportunity, and looking to move anyone interested to an interview within a couple of days.

Scott Buchanan: We've seen the results of being able to do that and I think when it actually boils down to, as I call it, the usual suspects, and what I mean by that is the candidate that is on a database, whether it's a web database or an agency database. Some of them are actually okay, but you tend to find the good candidates are probably the ones that are grafting away, that are hard at work and actually quite enjoy doing the work, and are probably not keeping a head above looking in the marketplace. Those are the ones that tend to do well and actually get looked after by their present employer as well, for all these reasons.

Terry Mallin: Yeah, exactly. And Scott, me and you have worked for a small number of different agencies, and what you tend to find is it's the same people registered with various different agencies, which is fine, which is good, but what it creates is just that natural small pool of people who are getting constant phone calls on different roles, which has got to annoy that specific person, but the companies are getting the same people sent in as well. So it's a blocker, there's no gain out of that. One of the stats I found online actually, it was in the last couple of months, do you know ... So a big thing for me is some companies will just put an ad up online and then take the response off that, and they might get a real big response of people, say 100 people, but literally only a couple are actually of interest. But do you know that for a start online one in 18 people, one in 18, are registered on a job board.

Scott Buchanan: Seriously? Wow.

Terry Mallin: So, if you're putting up an advert you are accessing, potentially, this is just take it with a pinch of salt, one in 18 people. So literally 17 people out of 18 you're not touching, you're not getting access to.

Scott Buchanan: You're missing, yeah.

Terry Mallin: So the importance of understanding and having access to potentially the full market is that there's more people to contact, you'll have more choice, you'll be able to make, hopefully, the right selection with the right tools in place, like video interview and behaviour quotes etc. which in turn, if you make that right selection, you can grow your business and in turn as well, you can actually define the culture within your business as well, and make sure that that's what you desire it to be.

Scott Buchanan: It allows a client to refine what they're actually looking for. Especially with, we solve a lot of problems that clients are typically facing, and what tends to come out of that is that they are being told by whoever it happens to be, whether it's their internal team, or their HR contact, or maybe a trusted recruiter, but the trusted recruiter maybe does other areas and is maybe not specializing within manufacturing, do you see? So they won't necessarily have the network that we're working on, and I think having the ability to be able to say, "Look, we know this is the scale of the marketplace. These are specifically the numbers that are in there, and actually if you're looking for Joe Blogs that has got five years within X, and doing something different from his career, then all these things can be refined down."

Scott Buchanan: And actually I know we've had some clients that have been arguably pretty skeptical at the start that have come through and realized that actually, certainly when new sites are built or new business comes along, they actually look forward to actually being part of the process, and having that bigger choice, which may not be readily available elsewhere.

Terry Mallin: Yeah, exactly. And one of the biggest frustrations is that you might only have one person that you're taking forward to an interview and your hands are tied behind the back to make that decision, but if you're able to map out that market and sit down with the higher manager and say, "Well, do you want to know what? I could potentially target 400 people. Let's fine tune that, let's look at that, and let's make sure we're making a real direct protocol of people that we could actually contact." And then hopefully you'll get to the stage where you've got at least two/three people that you'd hire any of the three, and then you're in a position where you're making sure you're making the right decision. And that all comes back to the numbers, and it's no good having one or two people and then going forward. This has to be numbers, it has to be making sure the right people are interested, putting forward only the right people, and that's all driven by marking out your market.

Terry Mallin: I think the key thing is understanding the size of your market. So if you're a UK wide business, map out the whole of that sector. If it's fruit and veg, if it's bakery, if it's drinks, whatever that may be, understand exactly how many people are in that, and then you can work your way to that number.

Scott Buchanan: Yeah, and keep taking account of any regional requirements and so on as well, and I think there's an element of understanding depending on, I guess, the level of role, and actually people's circumstances and so on kick in as well. I actually did this today, Terry, I did a search on our database for casting candidates, and I'm not talking about you doing your dancing again, and your musicals that you enjoy watching, but we're working with a, well let's see, but certainly I did some background to see where our presence is within that. Then one of the key factors that I was trying to identify was actually what product launch experience that some of the guys and girls have, specifically from a quality perspective. There's 228 sitting there.

Terry Mallin: Is that right, yeah?

Scott Buchanan: Do you know that way? Yeah, and that's really without delving into getting a better understanding of it. So these are the things and the tools that we've actually got already good to win.

Terry Mallin: Yeah, exactly. And I'm sure, on a note of dancing etc., I'm sure you've had a lot of thought whilst The Sound of Music whilst you've been rambling.

Scott Buchanan: The hills ... No, I'm not doing it.

Terry Mallin: That's exactly what was going through my head, that song, funnily enough. Yeah, so I think in summary, if you don't know how many people for each role within your manufacturing organizations, that could be anything from general managers, to finance directors, to HR managers, to operations, to supply chain procurement, to MPD. Any role at all that's critical to your business, you should know how many people are out there in the marketplace, and you should have access to them as well, because that's the only way that you'll get the best people for the roles. That brings us onto what I'll cover next week, Scott. What we'll do is, the question will be for the recruitment minute; do you have visibility of the entire senior management market? And more critically, once you have that, how do you then define and identify who the top 15% are?

Terry Mallin: So it's all good mapping out and having that contact base where you've got that outreach where you've got most of the market, if not 100%, but literally what you want is the best people within each area. So you want to best 15% in engineering, you want the best within finance, but how do you define that split, and how do you define who is the best and who is not?

Scott Buchanan: Correct.

Terry Mallin: So I think we'll do that next week, because that would follow on nicely, whilst it starts to get people thinking about actually mapping out the market.

Scott Buchanan: Your right, it's all very well saying, "I've got 100 candidates, or 100 people that we've got access to," but actually, if they're all not very good, then no one's any better off. But it's that in conjunction with what we'll talk about next week, that actually it is the way it works.

Terry Mallin: Exactly. And at the end of the day, for people to get to that level they've got to be good at what they do in their job, okay? Other people will be better than others, however this is probably more situated towards culture fix as well.

Scott Buchanan: Yeah.

Terry Mallin: Some people will be better fitted within a really dynamic, entrepreneurial fast paced environment, whilst others will be more suited to that more blue chip corporate process driven environment, and it's down to that each individual's personality. So I think it's identifying the top 15%, but then I would say matching that in regards to that specific organization's current culture, and future requirements and strategy.

Scott Buchanan: Yeah. Culture and also not forgetting the people that are already part of their organization that have maybe come through the ranks as well, and making sure you're well placed to, arguably, learn from others and maybe compliment the team and so on as well. It's the bigger picture that team work always goes further.

Terry Mallin: Exactly.

Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Manufacturing Ignition podcast. If you've made it this far, we take it that you enjoyed the show. In return, we'd love it if you would leave us a rating and review on iTunes. Subscribe while you're there, and we'll catch you for the next episode.

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